Russia has "reactivate[d] its trolls and bots ahead of Tuesday's midterms," The New York Times warns, aiming to "influence American elections and, perhaps, erode support for Ukraine." According to Times reporter Steven Lee Myers, those online propaganda initiatives "show not only how vulnerable the American political system remains to foreign manipulation but also how purveyors of disinformation have evolved and adapted to efforts by the major social media platforms to remove or play down false or deceptive content."
As with previous panics about Russian "election interference" that was intended to "sow chaos," the details do not match the hype. The example that Myers leads with, a Gab account under the name "Nora Berka," is supposed to illustrate how "vulnerable" voters are to online rants by Russians disguised as Americans and how cleverly those operatives take advantage of U.S. political divisions. But it actually shows how lame these efforts are and how implausible it is to suggest that they have any measurable impact on people's opinions, let alone electoral outcomes.
